The Institut Pasteur in Paris (Institut Pasteur)
When a music critic travels to Europe with a doctor, once in a while the events and sights they take in have to center on science. My partner, Ben, is a psychiatrist. So when we went a few years ago to Norway, where I was covering the Risor Chamber [...]

Olivier Messiaen photographed on March 16, 1972 (George Tames/The New York Times)
PARIS — This year is the centennial of the birth of Olivier Messiaen. The most personal celebration of this towering French composer, though not the most extensive, is taking place at his church, Église de la Trinité, in the ninth arrondissement, not far from [...]

The Medici Fountain is located in the Luxembourg Garden of Paris. (Photo: Ed Alcock for The New York Times)
PARIS — Starting in 1925, the Kansas City-born composer Virgil Thomson mostly lived in Paris, a city he adored. In 1940, with the war raging, it was time to go home to America. Thomson moved to New [...]

Palais Garnier (EPA)
PARIS — Less than an hour ago, I was deep down in the bowels of the resplendent Palais Garnier, peering through the caged entry to a descending stone staircase that leads to utter blackness, listening to the lapping waters of the palatial old opera house’s legendary underground lake, and hoping to catch the [...]

A scene from “Nozze di Figaro,” set in an office lobby. (Cosimo Mirco Magliocca/Opéra de Paris)
PARIS — Modern-dress productions of standard repertory operas that zap the stories to contemporary settings get a bad rap, overall. For sure, some updating concepts are heavy-handed and absurd. But when a concept has a point, the updating can enhance [...]

Outside the Opéra Bastille in Paris. (Photo: Jean-Pierre Muller/Agence France-Presse)
PARIS — Ever since it opened, on July 14, 1989, the 200th anniversary to the day of the storming of the Bastille, the Opéra Bastille has been a controversial place. The building itself, I mean. The main home of the Paris National Opera, it’s an imposing [...]

Does Gerard Mortier’s tenure in Paris foreshadow what he has in store for the New York City Opera? That’s why I’m here in Paris to find out.